If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I think quarantine makes the nerves grow frazzled. So, I’m an introvert. Big time. I picked a career where I spend at least 5 hours a day alone, listening to music, and not having to talk to anyone. Well, times have changed. The kids have been home from daycare for 6 weeks. My salvation now is putting in headphones and cleaning the kitchen/house while Pip covers the kids for a while in the evenings, or taking a bath between Lorelei’s 5:30 am feeding and when she wakes back up an hour or so later wanting to play. Our tentative end to Shelter In Place is May 4th but I expect it to be extended.

To help Moriarty have some schedule I created a laser-cut scheduler board with tiles for all his activities (outside time, cartoons, 1:1 with parents, school “work”, etc). The board has clocks and times so we can plot out his day around our meetings, and make sure his needs are getting met. I’m not sure they ever actually get met, but we’re doing our best. I’m utilizing skype calls with his friends and dance parties with Lisa Francine to get him more social connection. Luckily it’s summer and we’re outside a lot. He has only worn pajamas for a month, and prefers to just be in his underwear. He always wears it backward because the cooler patterns are on the butt. He’s a typical goofy 5 year old. He’s also had some really cute moments. I caught him singing to his sister one morning and heard a snippet of his lyrics, “when she is stinky I don’t care, she’s just a little Loli bear.” He’s pushing into new math skills like subtraction and informed us confidently at dinner that 2-4 is 8. Then rattled off “one two three four five six seven eight” really fast to prove his point. He’s also continuing to show curiosity. He and Pip were watching a fire and Moriarty asked what fire is made of. Pip was struggling to give an accurate answer, but in a way Moriarty could understand so what I heard was a lot of (not quoting!) um...well, there’s gasses. And there’s this thing called combustion and…

We’ve been trying to make sure he has enriching activities not just TV. Pip took him on a smelly scavenger hunt from a book he has. They smelled nice things like flowers, but also smelly things like mud and compost. I’ve been playing a lot of word games with him and he’s started sounding out simple words! His bike balancing skills have really improved. We bought him a pedal bike but he’s nervous about it. He can ride his balance bike down our hills and crash and laugh about it so I know he’s ready for the pedal bike when he wants to try again. Pip has been doing science with him and he and I have been doing a lot of baking.

Lorelei is developing at lightning pace. She was army crawling for months and just figured out how to crawl on hands and knees one day, so now she’s much speedier. She hasn’t signed back to us but seems to understand a lot of what we’re saying and doing. And she’s quite good at expressing herself. She had a wad of paper I wanted to take so I held out my hand and she put the paper in. Pip put her to bed and realized there was no binkie so he walked to get one and came back to find her sitting up with her hand out. He gave her the bink and she laid down. She signals to us when she wants to go to bed by releasing from our chest and reaching for her bed. It’s not like any other baby I’ve heard about. She’s teething and more fussy since we can’t give her as much attention while we work so we’ve gotten relaxed about binkies during the day. I don’t love it, but it seems to help with her teeth pain. She’s also cruising a lot and becoming more daring so she’s falling more. It’s scary and heartbreaking but I know it’s part of learning. The best new baby thing is the dolphin laugh. No idea how it started but it’s incredible. She’s eating almost everything we eat. She’s starting to feed herself (badly) and is very vocal about wanting food and being in control of her eating.

As a family we’re focused this summer on building garden beds and growing veggies. We tried somewhat last year but didn’t have raised beds and our fence still let the bunnies though. We netted a few sugar snap peas and 3 carrots. We will do better this year!!! Part of being in the garden so much means Lorelei is eating a lot of dirt. She seems to enjoy being in the grass and touching the plants. Moriarty is both her biggest fan and her biggest antagonizer.

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